Katherine Heigl Is All of Us When Posing in a Bikini: ‘I’m Sucking It in Sooooooo Hard’

The Suits star, 40, found a picture from a 2018 poolside vacation and shared the great lengths she went to for her pose.

“So this pic came up in my photo memories from last year and I have one very important thing to say….I’m sucking it in sooooooo hard I think I permanently pushed my organs into my spine,” Heigl joked on Instagram.

Knowing the vacation was on the horizon in 2018 gave Heigl extra motivation to lose the baby weight from her now-2-year-old son Joshua Bishop. She and husband Josh Kelley have two daughters by adoption, and Joshua was the first child she’s carried. Heigl gained 50 lbs. in the process, which left her with “moments of sheer panic,” she said in Aug. 2017.

“I had hoped to only gain 25-30 pounds like my mother during her pregnancies but found that just wasn’t possible for me,” she wrote in a blog post. “Despite starting my gestation out on a pregnancy friendly meal plan and hiking my butt off 5 days a week my weight kept creeping up. At a certain point, probably around 4 months I gave up the struggle and tried instead to respect my body’s needs and trust my instincts.”

Fourteen months after giving birth to Joshua — right before her vacation — Heigl shared three photos of her post-baby weight loss progress.

“I have a beach vacation coming up, a new job I start filming in April and my deep desire to feel fit, strong and sexy propelling me forward the last two months to finally lose the last of my baby weight and do a deep dive search for the ab muscles I knew were buried under that belly somewhere!” she wrote on Instagram.

Heigl said she used the popular BBG program from Kayla Itsines to drop the weight and tone up.

“I won’t lie, the workouts are real a– kickers but the progress I’ve made in only 5 short weeks has kept me motivated and inspired to keep going!” she said. “I am so grateful I’ve had a full year to find those ab muscles and get my butt back up where it belongs and wasn’t forced by work to snap back into shape but it is time to make the strength, fitness and overall health of my body a priority.”